What a view | Taiwanese Netflix series A Thousand Goodnights an enjoyable romantic family drama
Despite its Teen rating, the 10-episode debut series set in a small country town in Taiwan can also be enjoyed by those who have left their teenage years behind
The cast and plot of A Thousand Goodnights (Netflix) remain in danger throughout the 10-part debut series of this enchanting romantic family drama (with comedic characteristics). Danger, that is, of being eclipsed by the alluring, mountainous landscapes of Taiwan.
Television companies must be just as happy as tourist boards these days when they see how drone footage can so artistically set the scene for their productions, in this case lingering over the sunlit uplands of rural Shuangxi.
But on with the story. Mr Dai (Chen Bor Jeng) is the universally respected stationmaster of a picture-book railway halt in a small country town. Ever smiling, always cheerful, he is clearly going to be fate’s fall guy because, well, fate always goes after kind souls such as Mr Dai.
He is so kind, in fact, that he adopts a young girl abandoned by her mother on his station platform, raising her as his child alongside his own daughter.
Thus are we emotionally invested in the lives of upstanding, cynicism-free father and daughters in their slow-paced, green and pleasant land. Not that heartbreak, longing and the making of promises one cannot keep don’t haunt the narrative; and naturally there’s a serpent in the garden in the form of a scheming, acerbic company boss bent on lavishing misery on Dai Tian-qing (played by Cindy Lien), who had that difficult foray into the world, years earlier, on the station platform.
Like Lien, Li Chung-lin, Yao Aining and Nicholas Teo are so well scrubbed they almost glow, and represent characters with lives similarly touched by the saintly Mr Dai.